any type of programs wont open

I have a dimension, only have had it a week. Three times now I have come back to the computer "woke" ( was not in hibernation, just screen saver) it up, after this has been done I can not open any programs, explorer, outlook, word, etc. Everything I click on nothing will happen. When I go to restart a few windows pops up to say wait while this or that type of program is shutting down. After restart everything is working again with no problems. Just a few minutes ago we came home I went to check email. Clicked it opened, clicked to send/recve nothing happened it locked up. We were doing nothing at the time or before these problems, not dwnlding, installing, running mutible programs, nothing.......I'm at a loss with this. Like I said we have had this comp only a week. We purchased Dell because we heard such great things about it. Now I'm having more trouble in one week then I did with my old HP.

Loterbauer, since the problem deals with the operating system rather the system's BIOS which is the nature of this forum, I would suggest posting your problem in the Software - Windows XP forum. That would be a better venue in which to try and resolve the problem. The software forums are very popular and someone there can best advise you on how to proceed in fixing the problem. You can click here for a direct link to the XP forum.